simple minds, simple pleasures

I'm not hard to please. And today, I did what turned out to be a simple thing, after literally years of delay, and it all worked out, leaving me happy.

Backstory: my former American coworker at my former job gave me a router as a gift several years ago. He had pre-configured everything, supplying me with admin logins, passwords, and WiFi-network names. He even slipped in some jokes with the names and passwords he'd selected: the network name included the French word caveau, which can mean a little wine cellar for finer wines, a sepulchre-like structure inside a church in which to bury important people, or a sort of stonework pit in a cemetery that is destined to be occupied by future family members. The password my coworker had chosen for me reflected his view that I was an old, crotchety fart: get0ffMyL@wn. Got that, you little assholes?

I don't mind revealing the password because, well, a few years back, I was playing around with the router (which had been on the fritz) when I hit the factory reset and erased all of my coworker's personalizations. Well, shit. I had no idea how to get anything back, and by that point, my coworker had left the company to return to America to seek greener pastures (which he has since found—good for him). Luckily, none of this affected my computer use: I simply went back to plugging my computer directly into my building's WiFi, which at the time was provided through the Golden Goose, i.e., the company I'd been working for (later, when I left the company, I had to re-sign up for service, now paying for it out of my own pocket instead of enjoying the company's largesse). The router sat, unused and collecting dust, and I occasionally grabbed it and looked online for ways to revive the damn thing—not so much because it would allow me to use WiFi for my desktop again but because it would be a good source of WiFi for my phone, and I wouldn't have to use my desktop as a WiFi hotspot anymore. Of course, using my desktop as a WiFi hotspot wasn't straining anything or causing me any sort of inconvenience, so none of this struck me as very important, and I wasn't able to figure out how to bring the router back anyway.

Then today, as I was prepping the delicious meal I'd only eaten an hour ago, something came to me, and I tried once again to reactivate my router. I looked again at the bottom of the router, where information was listed as to what website to visit and what IDs and passwords to use, and somehow, just by following online instructions and doing random stuff, I got the damn thing going again! Not with my coworker's presets, which were long gone, but with the router's natural factory settings. So as of now, my desktop is enjoying WiFi from the router, and my phone is, too. No more unstable WiFi for the phone. Woo-hoo!

I suppose the router could go wonky again, just as it had several years ago. But for the moment, all seems well, and while I'm still subject to my ancient building's equally ancient internet speeds, things seem to be running smoothly for the moment.

After getting my router's WiFi going again, I went back to prepping a large dinner of Kevin-style "gyros." Photos will be coming soon. Just you wait.